Amazon’s executive in charge of its private-label business has found a new role on the supply chain side, following the company’s decision to axe dozens of house brands, Insider has learned.
Matt Taddy, formerly Amazon’s VP of private brands, is now VP of supply chain optimization technology, also known as SCOT, according to an internal email reviewed by Insider.
Taddy started his new job last month, replacing Deepack Bhatia, who left Amazon to “pursue a new opportunity,” said SVP of Worldwide Operations, John Felton, in an email last month. Taddy now reports to Felton.
“Matt brings a unique combination of customer obsession, science, technology, and financial acumen to this position. With the business-critical focus that we have on inbound and placement across the Stores business, this is both a huge challenge and huge opportunity for Matt and the whole team,” Felton wrote in the email.
Amazon’s spokesperson didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Amazon’s private label business launched dozens of in-house brands in recent years across a number of categories, including clothing, furniture, and electronics. But the business drew regulatory scrutiny after Amazon allegedly used third-party merchant data to develop its own competing products, and giving them preferential treatment in its search results. The Federal Trade Commission said in a lawsuit against Amazon last month that the company “degrades its search quality by stacking the deck against third-party competitors of Amazon’s private label products.”
In response, Amazon started significantly scaling back its private label business, and decided to cut many of these brands, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Taddy has spent the past six years at Amazon. He was VP of economic technology before running the private-label business. Before that, he was a statistics professor at the University of Chicago and head of economics and data science at Microsoft, according to his Linkedin profile.
Do you work at Amazon? Got a tip?
Contact the reporter Eugene Kim via the encrypted-messaging apps Signal or Telegram (+1-650-942-3061) or email (ekim@insider.com). Reach out using a nonwork device. Check out Insider’s source guide for other tips on sharing information securely.
Read the full article here
